Touch Me

Without touch humans will die. Among the living things on this planet, humans in particular, require being touched and nurtured as part of the survival matrix. A controlled study of infants who were not given proper nurturing (gentle touch, holding, verbal interaction, eye-gazing from another human being), while all other nutritional, health needs, and physiological needs (less the nurturing) were met, experienced a high mortality rate.

We know that hospitals, prisons, adult care facilities, and cemeteries are heavily populated by people who were not given adequate nurturing, human touch, and interaction in their younger years. While they received enough attention to survive, they were denied the ability to thrive for lack of touch.

Human beings need to be touched. The lack of compassionate human touching sends people in a whirlwind of exploration and searching for something to fill the void left by lack of touch. This pleasure-seeking enthusiasm leads to over-compensation by engaging in activities which seem to appease the need, or make you feel better, even though these efforts do not satisfy for long.

These activities include seeking material possessions, hoarding of objects or financial resources, living above one’s means, intense focus on increasing social status, moving into positions of power, risk taking, thrill seeking (engaging in potentially dangerous or questionably legal or moral activities), substance abuse, self-centered enhancements (i.e., cosmetic surgery, bodybuilding, etc.), among other things which can stave off the need for physical connection, including successive sexual encounters.

Sex and human connection with compassionate touching are not even closely related, therefore, the quest for successive sexual encounters, while it will ease the pain until the next dose, will not sustainably fill the void left by not touching and being connected to others.

Years of seeking to fill the void of left by lack of authentic human connection and nurturing touch, leads one to the conclusion that nothing can fill the gap, and without connected physical touch, the immune system declines, clearing the way for disease and one’s deterioration of heath.

If you are among those who did not receive adequate amounts of compassionate nurturing as a child, you probably don’t even know how important it is to you. You do not need to live your life as an A-type personality in a fervor to keep up with the Joneses, spending your life scurrying through the rat race, turn to a life of addiction, or crime, etc. in an attempt to feel better. You can engage in some healthy activities which can fill the void left by lack of connection.

Snuggling with a pet (that is not averse to the idea of snuggling) can help to feel the void, and it doesn’t even require the engagement of another person. This is a good source of connection in the absence of another human being and has proven to be effective for increasing health and longevity in the elderly.

Hugging (while it may sound crazy, at first) is an excellent non-threatening activity. If you are not well-acquainted with the idea of compassionate hugging, just for the sake of hugging without any sexual or manipulative intent, it can take some time to get used to the idea.

A 7-second hug boosts the immune system and releases health-enhancing feel good hormones, like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, while a 20-second hug (which would be awkward with someone with whom you did not know well or were intimate with) increases the effects exponentially.

There are other methods available to subsidize your lack of touch and to neutralize the effects of lack of touch in your childhood. These can be explored with an aware third-party, coach, or counselor.

Mood Enhancing Quick Fixes

As good a person you are, you’re reaching out and helping others, taking care of yourself, offering your best to your family and friends, and doing your part to make the world a better place. There’s no doubt you’re living the good life… Still, every once and a while you feel a little down, and you need a little mood enhancement.

If you’re feeling a little down, there can be a host of reasons why your mood takes a nose-dive every so often. When this happens to you there are some things you can do that can get you back on track and feeling better.

Shifting your mood can be done by making a few adaptations that do not take much time nor effort, and can have a profound and immediate effect on your outlook and make you feel even better in no time.

Mood Enhancing Quick Fixes

Some of the most rapid ways to affect your mood include getting your feet off the floor, put them up and take a fruit or veggie break. Dab a little mood-enhancing essential oil on your wrists and neckline, or refresh your favorite fragrance. Take a 5-minute funny break, read some funny comics, one-liners, or make funny faces in the mirror. Take a splash-and-dash (a quick shower) or splash cold water on your face.

If you have a little more time, you could read a few pages, possibly a chapter, of an inspirational book or magazine. Close your eyes and meditate or just listen to the sounds of nature (if you’re able to find some nature to listen to, otherwise silence is golden). Do some stretching exercises, or take a brisk walk to the mailbox or car and back, Pick a small designated area and clean or organize it. Make a green or fruit smoothie and enjoy it peacefully while you are taking a break. Think of all the things your grateful for so far today, boldly jot them down, and while you’re at it, think of people you haven’t contacted for a while; look them up on your phone and send them a text, or at least a smiley face.

With a little more time on your hands, you could get some noise-canceling headphones and listen to your favorite mix, just relax and enjoy the peace and quiet, or set the alarm and take a 20-minute power nap. Pick up the phone and talk to someone you haven’t talked to in a while, or write a letter and mail it. Take a walk down memory lane by creating a new, or going through your photo albums and re-arranging the photos.

Search for possible locations for your next vacation. Get out, take a walk, greet everyone you meet with a smile and a, “Hi,” maybe include a little shopping trip and get yourself a little something-something. Or, light a scented candle and take a half-hour soak in the tub.

You could search-out a new recipe on Google, and plan a little romantic candle-lit meal (could be for one, two, or more).

Have more, share below…

Why Would Someone Kick You When You’re Down?

Clearly, a psychopath would get a thrill from adding a little more pain to your misery when things aren’t going your way, but when you’re really down and out, why would people (some people you may have referred to as “friends” not long ago, as well as people you don’t know, or don’t know well at all) take pot shots at you, when you have little or no resources for recovering from the attack or wounds therefrom?

Why would someone kick you when you’re down?

There are people with low self-esteem who find comfort in knowing that someone is worse off than they are. We see this a lot in the personal growth arena, friends who encourage you to do better, something good, because they, “want only the best for you.” That’s all well and good until you start to do better than them, then they start confiding in you to caution and discourage you, because you’re heading into treacherous territory, in an attempt to dissuade you, to prevent you from some success which they find to be elusive for themselves. All the while, praying for your failure so that they can feel better when comforting you, once again, with their, “I tried to warn you,” or, I-told-you-so’s.

The people who would intentionally kick you when you’re already down, are few and far between, though it might not seem so when you are down and out.

What is far more likely, is that as your ability to influence or affect the lives of other people decreases, so does your significance, and if your significance continues to decline, you may appear to be invisible to the rest of society due to your lack of significance.

The Matryoshka Doll

Let’s take a look at the life of a predominant professor at a university whose youngest of three daughters was diagnosed with leukemia and given one year to live. The parents, siblings, and other friends rallied around her. The young girl, not wanting to impose or impede the lives of her friends and relatives took her own life during a sleepover at a friend’s house. This devastated all who loved her so much, the family disintegrated as each member blamed the other.

Looking for some way to make sense of it all and to find some way to feel better, the professor, now disenfranchised from his family, resigned from the university and cashed out his retirement to open a little trinket gift shop in his daughter’s favorite vacation community surrounding himself with the items which would have brought his daughter so much joy. One week into his third month of business, his shop burned down. He lost everything with nothing to fall back on, and sank into a deeper depression.

It wasn’t long and he found himself among the homeless wandering the city. One day, he is visited outside a mission by a young woman whom he barely recognized as the girl who had hosted his daughter’s sleepover on her last night. They embraced, cried, and the young woman gave him something that she (his daughter) had left at her house, a matryoshka doll (also known as a set of Russian nesting dolls). The young woman and the now homeless man parted ways, only now he possessed a priceless treasure (which he had bought her in that very vacation town) representing his little girl’s love for precious gifts. He could find peace playing with the dolls, just like his daughter must have, he felt connected to her, and safe, no matter where he was.

One evening while playing with his matryoshka dolls in an alleyway, tucked away in a doorway, a car barreled down the alley nicking the corner of a dumpster which swung around and nearly hit the man. He was shocked but relieved to find that he hadn’t been harmed, only his matryoshka doll was smashed to pieces.

Three days later, the man’s body was found clutching pieces of a broken matryoshka doll.

Unintentional LIfe Circumstance

To the man, he had suffered a countless succession of bad luck or personal attacks which piled one atop the other, appeared as though everyone was out to get him, or wanted to demonize him. Every time he saw a light of glimmering hope, his hope was abruptly shattered, literally, when the matryoshka doll was crushed. All these things were in reality, unintentional life circumstance taking place all around him with no malice intended. As much as we would all like to believe that the world revolves around us, we’re all just swimming around in the same swirling life soup.

What really happened was that the man had become invisible to society, unable to affect or influence the lives of others. What about his friends and colleagues? Where were they in all of this? In his growing depression he withdrew from otherwise active social circles and in our world today, when everything is so aggressively attempting to gain our attention in every moment of every day, out of sight means out of mind. If you are not reminding your people of your existence, the effect of your existence loses relevancy, except for the occasional story or nostalgic fable which you may have played a part in, in the past.

Feel Better

We, all of us, the man, his daughter, and other family members, friends, colleagues, people he knew and never knew, all are living our own lives from the perspective of our individual bodies, limited to what we can experience via our senses. And we are all looking for a way to find some way to feel better.

From this perspective, nothing exists in the world, except for that which concerns us. Until you read the story, a broken matryoshka doll had no significance to you whatsoever. While the man might have felt his life slipping from him as he asked God why someone would purposefully want to destroy the only thing in life he had to live for? While the joy-riding teenagers didn’t even know the man was there. Their only concern was to make sure the damage to the car from grazing the dumpster was not too noticeable, otherwise, they were just having a good time feeling better, celebrating life.

Same incident. Different perspectives.

In most cases, when it feels like someone is kicking you when you’re down, nothing is further from the truth. The truth of the matter is that people are only living their own lives, doing the best they can with what they have. We all have limited resources, and want to feel a little better. All of us. So, we traverse this planet with blinders on focused on trying to find ways to feel better.

Of course, there are other people with whom we share the planet with, and those who may the ability to influence or affect our lives garner the most of our attention. Our professor at the university, our parents, family members, and friends. Then there are the people who support our lives and our attempt to have a better life, the cashier, gas attendant, engineer, postman, police officer, etc… and those who are making their own ways by embracing negative energies, such as the people engaged in less than legal activities, as well as those who have little or no significance to us, as they fade away into the darkness.

And you take it personally when (metaphorically) someone drives by you in a Lamborghini, when you don’t even have a bicycle. You feel invisible, except for when you make a spectacle of yourself at the street corner holding your “Will Work for Food” sign.

Except for in the rarest of circumstances, people do not intentionally kick you when you are down. They are simply doing the best with what they have and may not realize the affect that their actions (or inactions) might have on the life of someone else. And while we all can try to be mindful about how every breath we take, step we make, word we utter, or dollar we spend affects the lives of everyone who could possibly be affected, to do so would be nothing short of impossible.

The man’s family separated, not because they all blamed him, or each other for the girl’s suicide (which also was not meant to hurt anyone. She was just looking for a way to not be a burden and to feel better herself), but because they had lives to live, and they found it too painful to do so surrounded by constant reminders of the girl’s decision to make her exit in that way, on the blinders went. And they all charged off into different directions, trying to make some sense of life and to find a way to feel better themselves.

Cut yourself some slack, everyone is not out to get you.

No one is kicking you while you’re down, but while you’re down there, find ways to reactivate your life. Don’t let yourself fade away into the nothingness. Find respectable and honorable ways to remind us that you are still here. Keep doing that until more and more of us take notice of you.

You are an amazing person, with a unique purpose, message, passion, and mission for your life. Your experience has powerfully equipped you to help others who may be struggling with the same issues as you have had to deal with. You don’t have to have all the answers, what you do need to do is not give up but get up, take what control you can and carve out a new life for you, a better life, possibly your best life, and make the world a better place.

This is my prayer for you,

-Amen

Help I Can’t Take One More

Aaahhh! I am so far over my head, “Help!” I don’t think I can take one more thing! Ever feel like you’ve had all you can stand? It’s as if the hits just keep coming, and you think about the saying that “God will not give you more than you can take,” and right about now, it feels like it’s a lie because you are well over your head.

You’re losing it. You feel like you have zero control of anything as your world crumbles all around you, and you ask yourself (or some deity), “What’s happening?”

Okay, you asked for it, so here it is:

This is all on you.

(Take a moment to express your disagreement with the idea that this might all be your fault, then come back and give me a chance to explain.)

Here’s the deal, when something happens that you don’t like, you have seventeen seconds to feel bad, after which if you don’t pull your head out, the eighteenth second begins to emit the frequency which matches the vibration of you are enveloped by. This energy (which is clearly negative) attracts like energy.

So, every second that follows while you are wallowing in the negative energy is calling more negative energy to you. More bad news is on the way; here it comes…

The only way to stop the spiraling whirlpool which is dragging you down and draining you of the possibility of having the best things in life is to stop the negative energy and start getting into a positive frequency. Even if it’s a low positive vibration it’s so much better than remaining in the negative, and it stops the attraction of more bad news.

You must get in touch with you, all the good things about you. You know you’re here for a reason and you were not called to be in this negative vibe. This is not your natural state. You are called to love yourself, embrace your power and continue to draw a line between what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad. You have the power to choose to feel good or to feel bad. When you are feeling good, you are in touch with the real you. You are attracting good things and not bad.

In this positive state of mind, you are thinking clearer, you are creative, resourceful, you are open to all good things as they unfold before you, you are able to find a sense of peace, and things are leaning toward increased clarity in your life.

You must cut out some positive space for you to separate yourself from the negative and immerse yourself in a positive vibration. Take a day off, disconnect from the madness, take a break. Take time to focus your attention on doing something, putting you in a place where you feel good; and the better you can get yourself to feel, the better.

Take a walk in nature, or watch a comedy film or a tear-jerker but find a way to release some pent-up emotion and embrace the cleanse. Count your blessings; get out a piece of paper and a writing instrument and start jotting all the things you can be grateful for in your life (even when things are at their worst, there are some good things that can be found, even if the process feel daunting at the outset). Write down the good things in life you can look back on.

I love you

Everything will be okay

If you’re like me, all you want to hear and feel is, “I love you,” and, “Everything will be okay.”

It’s up to you to put yourself in the state where you feel loved and assured that everything will be okay by no one or no other thing than you, yourself. This is your responsibility, as counter-intuitive that it might sound or feel at first, this is up to you and you alone. You need to accept this responsibility and start loving yourself, truly loving, appreciating, encouraging and empowering yourself.

Sure, someone else can help to make you feel these things, but this energy which comes from outside yourself fades, and when it fades, it requires finding another source outside of yourself to re-energize yourself.

Your source of energy from within is limitless and divine. It doesn’t depend on anyone or anything else. As long as there is life within you, that limitless source of energy resides within the recess of your heart, just waiting for you to call upon it.

When you are feeling better, reminded of those things for which you can feel grateful, loving and supporting yourself, you are at a much better place to look again at the challenges that you face.

From this perspective, you are able to see answers and have access to skills and tools which weren’t within reach when you were drowning in despair.

Congratulations.

You got this.

How to Turn Your Blues Into Blue Skies

Ever have one of those days when you’re feeling a little blue?

You know, you look around, and it appears to be a normal day. You see other people appear to be enjoying today, just like any other day, but you’re feeling a little off of your game?

Well, it happens to the best of us.

Thank God, we’ve been given all the tools necessary to get ourselves out of this slump. All we have to do is to use our head (for, “something more than a hat rack,” my grandfather used to say). You can adjust the focus of your thoughts, which have obviously veered off course. You’re probably thinking about things that are not putting you in a joyful state of mind. Chances are you’re thinking of someone less fortunate, something you might be hesitant or worried about, or any number of things that would affect your otherwise brilliant state of mind.

If you allow yourself to be distracted by negative thoughts, the frequency of your vibration begins to sink. This can dramatically affect your mood and perception of life all around you. Left unattended, your declining vibration could cause the loss of your enthusiasm, even activities which may have brought you joy to lack their sheen, and possibly lead to depression.

Staying in this trend of lowering your vibration can also affect the physical world around you, as you are at sorts with the more positive energies around you and you are attracting more negative energy flows and awkward circumstances.

It is so amazing that just by tweaking our thoughts, even the slightest bit, the whole world around us begins to change. What an incredible gift, the awesome power which has been bestowed upon us to change the world, even the whole universe, just with the energy of our thoughts.

A bit of positive physical activity can also help to get that stagnant blood moving and anything to engage your heart to take notice will help lift your mood and raise your vibration. You could try taking a brisk walk or a dip in the pool. Maybe just getting out in nature or feeling the grass beneath your feet and between your toes will do it; or you might try listening to your favorite music as you watch the sun go down. The whole idea , here, is to disconnect your thoughts from what is bringing you down and finding that peaceful place in your heart and mind to dwell in for a while.

Memories can be tricky to manage. If you think back to the bad times, your vibration can quickly sink to match where you were in that moment in your past. On the other hand, remembering an good memory can also take you back to the higher vibration you were in at this moment in your past. So, you could think about the good times with a special friend, happy times you spent with friends and family when you were younger. You could also remember those instances in the past, when you felt so blessed or your heart overflowed with gratitude.

After you’ve spent some precious moments reliving the best moments in your life, when you return to look at the day that you were having, the circumstances or challenges you were facing, it doesn’t look so bad; and now you’re on your way to getting your vibe back.

Keep a handle on how your feeling and check in with your inner self, your heart, and see where you are. Be aware and ready to recognize when you’re starting to feel your vibration slip downward. It can be such a slow and gentle decline that you might not notice it until you’re feeling bummed out. But if you’re looking for it, you can spot it early and cut it off at the path.

We all face challenges that can throw us for a loop, but it is best not to spend too much time fretting over things which are beyond your control. Just as accidents can leave a scar on your body, life can have its way with you and leave an emotional scar inside, that no one can see, but you can feel it. Just like any other wound, time does heal, though the rate of healing cannot be predicted. Surely, though, the more you focus on what is making you not feel good, the longer it will take for you to recover.

If you must be reviewing the incident or issues that are making you feel blue, try looking for the blessing, the lesson, or the hidden treasure in it. All adversity has something amazingly meaningful tucked in side, but you have to be sleuthfully adept at finding the hidden treasure. One thing’s for certain, if you seek it, you will find it. Be looking for the positive aspect and it will be revealed to you.

Often an unexpected circumstance or event can give you skills or insights that will be of great importance in an event that lies ahead of you, or maybe you’re becoming more aware of what to avoid, so that you don’t have to face another situation, like this one in the future.

When you’re feeling blue, this is not the time to take on new opportunities, sign contracts, or promise to do something that you might regret later. First get back into your groove by raising your vibration and are able to maintain it for a while, before taking on any important projects. Feeling blue can cloud your otherwise better judgment.

You might want to enlist the aid of a friend, confidant, coach or counselor to act as a sounding board. By telling your story to someone else who will not judge you for your sensitive thoughts, you can relieve some of the pressure and thereby raise your vibration. You can also achieve a higher vibration more quickly and easily by sharing your good time memories with your friend(s) or confident, because if they are enthusiastically joining in on your joy, your good vibrations will be magnified exponentially.

I know when I get down and lonely, I find that focusing on God, and all the blessings he has given me, the incredible life and love for my children and grandchildren, maybe pluck a little on my guitar and it’s not long when I can find myself with vibes fully restored on the mountain top, ready to tackle just about anything.

The Power of Oh Well and Not Caring Too Much

One of my mentors has a specific mantra that protects her from all things that might otherwise be frustrating or stressful. I told her she should write the book and teach her technique all over the world (if she does write the book, please think about picking up a copy for yourself to learn how…),

She has mastered the art of, “Oh well.”

She has associated her state of being to go to a calm and peaceful state any time she utters the words, “Oh well.” So, when she starts to feel a drop in her vibrational frequency, if she is able she utters the words, which immediately takes her to her safe place.

While this is an extremely effective way of centering herself in seconds, the effect on anyone else within proximity may not see the benefit and may even be offended by her ability to not engage in the proposed negative vibration or thought pattern.

How often do you see, hear or read about disturbing news that makes you feel bad?

How often do you report your negative findings to someone else?

Why do you do it?

Because when you feel bad about something you’ve just learned about, you have taken on the emotional weight of the bad news, lowering your vibration. You want to get rid of some of the emotional weight in an effort to raise your vibration, so you don’t feel so bad. You do this by reporting the unsettling information to someone else. If they feel bad about what you have presented to them, you feel better, because you have effectively transferred some of the weight of your negative emotional weight to the person you’ve told and you feel better.

When you’ve met someone who doesn’t take the emotional weight that you’re trying to ride yourself of by feeling badly, this doesn’t make you feel any better, and you are likely to take offense to their not receiving your negative vibration. In this case, you might even plead your case reinforcing your negative vibration about the bad news in an effort to convince the other person to feel obligated to feel bad about the negative news you’re trying to release.

If this person is positively resilient (like my mentor) you are likely to feel worse about the negative news, because you’ve sunk to a lower vibrational level in your attempt to convince the other person how bad this news is. This makes you feel hurt or angry and want to strike back at this positively resilient person who refuses to compromise his or her vibration. If you don’t say it, you’re likely to think that this person is an insensitive or uncaring individual. And if you’ve said something to that effect out loud to someone like my mentor, you may get a response, something like, “I care, but not too much,” which reinforces their positive position, and doesn’t offer you much comfort because they still are refusing to join you in your misery.

That said, a better approach is for you to not get so agitated, upset and angry at bad news to which you are exposed. This variety of negatively impacting data you are exposed to can be anything from your own personal experiences of being victimized and pent up frustrations about work-related or social injustices to watching the news or worrying about something you have little or no control of. Letting these things build up inside you will drain your personal resources, lower your vibration, and left untended to may lead to frustration, anger, feelings of helplessness, depression and possibly even suicidal thoughts.

What can you do about it?

You can take full responsibility for your own mental state, like my mentor does, by controlling how you feel about anything you are exposed to. Another thing you could do is to purposefully not expose yourself to undesirable information about things over which you could not possibly have any control over. Not submitting your emotional state to negative influences, can be as easy as turning off the TV, or especially avoiding the CNN (Constantly Negative News) feed.

There are other activities you can engage in that will support your vibrational state positively. Doing so will raise your emotional vibration and also your quality of life.
You can raise your vibration by learning how to find an emotional state of peace using relaxation techniques or meditation. Getting out, taking a walk or engaging in a bit of exercise for as little as seventeen minutes will raise your vibration and make you feel better.

Being mindful about the food and nutrients you are putting in your body will help maintain your positive personal natural resources, increasing your immune system and giving you the raw materials to respond better to stressful influences.

Pay attention to your emotional state, review how you are feeling, and if you’re not feeling on your game, take time out to make yourself feel better by engaging in an activity you enjoy or puts you in a more positive vibration.

If you’re feeling down, stressful, or sense your vibration sinking, put your hand on your heart, focus your attention on the area of your heart and take slow deep breaths as you imagine your breath going in and out of your heart, for seventeen seconds. This will help to center you emotionally and allow you to have a better perspective by neutralizing your otherwise negative emotional state.

When someone tries to unload their negative crap on you, learn to shrug it off with a little, “Oh well.” And if they protest, back it up with a bit of, “I care, but not too much,” and enjoy the benefits of your new heightened emotional state, and
Be happy.

How Do You Feel About Things?

How you feel about things in life greatly influences your general state of mind. For the most part, how you feel about things dictates what kind of life you will live, how healthy you will be and how long you will live. Mental and physiological health is keenly attuned to how you feel. The people who have control of how they feel about things, maintaining a more positive outlook, experience a more stable emotional vibration allowing them to have more happiness, good health, love and longevity.

If you are actively taking responsibility for living a better life, you are looking at your mind/body/spirit dynamics and taking care to optimize your life and lifestyle. You’re more conscious about what your relationship with your body is like and you’re more attentive of the food you eat, maybe you’re exercising more, spending more time with Mother Nature, you are taking a more proactive approach to how you conduct your life, but are you making the effort to control how you feel?

A healthy holistic lifestyle includes influencing, taking more personal responsibility and being conscious about your intellectual and social health, physical health and the health of your emotional state. How you feel about things, your emotional state, greatly influences the health of all the other areas of your life.

Life brings you a great deal of opportunities to negatively influence how you feel about things. There are our familial and social relationships and interactions with other people with whom we do not maintain a relationship as life goes on all around us. Other opportunities to affect how you feel include your vocation, finances, your health status, concern about your community, and the world at large.

If you are to get a grip on how you feel about things that are presenting themselves to your awareness, you are more proactive about taking responsibility for what you are exposed to, if you are able.

The amount of stress you are exposed to can have a huge impact on how you feel, so managing stress is a key component in feeling better about life in general. Stress reduction should be of primary concern for establishing a better emotional state and by exposing yourself to fewer stressful situations, you will feel so much better about what life presents to you.

Many techniques are readily available to reduce, manage, or eliminate stress which is felt physiologically including meditation, breathing exercises, positive affirmations and visualization. Only you can determine what best suits your personal taste and resonates with you.

Eliminate media exposure to things that make you feel bad about life, the government or your safety. Most media comes packaged with an infectious negative vibration which affects how you feel about things. Consider turning off the TV, avoiding negative news and Internet feeds, by taking a media hiatus.

Guarding your thoughts to prevent you from focusing on things that are negative will go a long way in feeling better about life. Avoid negative self-talk, which leads to poor self esteem and diminishes confidence, making you feel helpless, if not hopeless, about your life.

Start reprogramming your mind positively. Get into a routine of reciting positive affirmations, and honoring yourself by speaking words of kindness and love about you, who you are, how blessed you are, and how your life may be a blessing to others. As you retrain your mind to think more positively, you will feel better and your physiological health will also get much better. It is a fact of life.

Learning how to let go of negative emotions, like uncertainty, sadness or anger, is hugely beneficial because if you hold these feelings inside they deplete your immune system and you become more susceptible to failing health and disease.

Finding a confidant who you can trust and talk to, as well as writing out in a journal how you feel about things negatively in the past as well as in the present, or even things that may be looming in the future, can be an effective key to releasing pent up negative emotions.

These practices in self-care will make you feel better about living a better life:

  • Engage in stress reduction techniques
  • Eat food that nourishes your body and exercise
  • Wind down and calm yourself for a good night’s sleep every night
  • Limit or eliminate exposure to negative news and media
  • Don’t put off dealing with issues you face in life
  • Practice positive and loving self-talk
  • Do something fun, that you like, every day

And forgive yourself for everything, for after all, you are doing the best you can with what you have.

Live Healthy Exercise and Eat

You’ve come to that point in your life where you know things have got to change for you to start living the life you want to live. You’re starting to change your thought processes, you’re getting more in tune with your heart and life’s purpose. This new sense of meaning creates an empowered perspective as you continue to find ways to optimize your human experience while you are here in the third dimension on planet earth.

As you make the necessary adjustments in your life, you’re living a better life and every change you make lights the way for new changes to allow as you evolve into the new, more advanced and enlightened version of yourself. Your attention is drawn to your reflection in the mirror.

While you’re feeling better than ever and your countenance has a certain glow about it, you’re thinking you’ve been given charge of your body, this earthly vessel referred to as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19) and you begin to think, “I could do better,” as you contemplate a healthier approach to honoring your earth suit.

If you’re like me (the author of Don’t Diet or Exercise) you may be somewhat resistant to the idea of exercising and eating right. While the New Year looms only days away, you consider looking for ways to enhance your fitness as your challenge of the year.

Looking over the vast array of a hugely monetary-infused industry, everyone has a different spin on what it takes to live healthy.

As my gift to you, I will demystify the healthy living challenge by reducing it to its simplest and most brief process, as follows:

Exercise

Unfortunately, this is where you have to start, but it doesn’t have to be as brutal as it might sound if you’re contemplating exercise for the first time.

Question: What can you expect from adding a little exercise to your weekly regimen? Answer: Increased energy, cognitive abilities, fat-burning weight loss and longevity, just to name a few.

In an effort to get right down to it, all you really have to do to optimize your health is to exercise and eat right. In term of exercise all you need is 20 to 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and 20 to 25 minutes of resistance training four times per week.

Eat

As far as the diet portion of your optimal health program for the next year, all you need to remember is this:

  • Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water during the day
  • Eat numerous tiny meals (optimally four) and a couple of small snacks during the day
  • Limit your fat ingestion to no more than what’s essential for sufficient flavor

Balance your meals by including

  • palm-sized portions of proteins
  • fist-sized portions of complex carbohydrates
  • fist-sized portions of vegetables and fruits

Don’t Overdo It

No need to jump in over your head, just start with baby steps at the shallow end and work your way more and more into achieving your exercise and eating goals. Just start small and increase a little each week, or month, instead of overwhelming yourself all at once.

What to expect

Weeks 1-8: Feeling better and having more energy
Month 2-6: Losing inches and becoming leaner. Clothes fit better as you gain muscle and lose fat.
After 6 months: Losing weight more rapidly, looking and feeling better than ever.

 

Enjoy Life Feeling Good People

Enjoy feeling good about living a better life by being one of the good people

Five easy steps leading to you’re enjoying the best this life has to offer, sharing your goodness with others as we all do a little something-something to make the world a better place.

enjoy life feeling good people 5 step feel better 21 day challenge

Be Good

Smile. Treat others with kindness, respect and tolerance. A little tolerance goes a long way. Do not judge other people, their actions. If you feel the inclination to look down at someone, make fun of them or feel anger or resentment welling up inside you, try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and imagine what it must be like to be living their life. Realize that they, just like you, are doing the best they can with what they have. Empathize and send them love instead.

Focus on Good Things

Look for and see the good in all things. Even in the worst of times, be looking for the beauty, the love, the positivity that abounds in all situations, even when it’s difficult to imagine anything good at the time. Do not research, look at, read, listen to or engage in conversation about injustice, tragedy, natural disaster or any other opportunities to be caught up in a whirlpool of negativity. Listen to music that makes you happy (not sad songs), read Chicken Soup for the (fill in the blank) Soul books or any other book that is implicitly positive. Look at images that fill your heart with joy, post them around your house, on Facebook (don’t share anything negative) and at work.

Be Around Good People

The people you surround yourself with carry and maintain a particular vibration. If they have a negative vibration, it is difficult – if not impossible – for them to see the good in any situation. This negative vibration permeates the space around these individuals and is infectious to others. Being around people who talk about or focus on negativity or things that are wrong or bad in the world, lower your vibration. Enough exposure will drag your vibration down to match theirs.

Likewise, spending more time around more positive people who maintain higher, more optimistic vibrations will elevate your vibration to match theirs, as you are in their presence more often. Find new friends who have higher vibrations. Being around good people, who are optimistic, use good words and do good things makes positivity easier.

Do Good Things

Start finding ways to do things that are good. Unsolicited acts of kindness, even if very small, help to make the world a better place. Be polite and courteous. Smile and compliment the cashier, let someone who looks like they’re in a hurry merge in traffic, let someone go before you in the checkout line, tip the waitress, hold the door for someone with their hands full. Look for opportunities to assist others who might need a helping hand, or just a word of encouragement. Make a donation to a worthy cause, help promote a worthy cause or start a worthy cause of your own (only make sure that it, like you, focuses on something good, not bad).

Feel Good Activities

The more you engage in activities that make you feel good, the better you feel. The better you feel, the easier it is to pass your goodness to others. Doing things that make you feel good raises you vibration and affects the vibration(s) of those around you.

As you feel increasingly better because you’re being in the places and participating more in activities that make you feel good, this “good feeling” attracts more good opportunities and circumstances in your life.

21 Day Good Life Challenge

Don’t believe me? I dare you to take the 21 Day Good Life Challenge. Take a 21-day negativity hiatus. Determine to be good for three weeks, starting today. Start each day by looking in the mirror and saying, “I love my life!”* Cut out images that make you feel good and stick them around on your mirror. Tolerate more, focus on good things, spend more time around good people, find opportunities to do good things, and make more time to do the things that bring you joy.

Three weeks of living the good life will raise your vibration enough, you will never want to sink back to where you were before as you being to live a better life the life you always wanted to live and enjoy it more fully every day.

See also: How to be Happy

* Thanks, Adam.